SageACT!

Seems like ACT! has been around forever. Actually, it’s just 25 years and while that’s an eternity in software, kudos to Sage for keeping the technology up to date with improvements like social and mobile access. The company has released a short video commemorating the milestone.

Today’s ACT! is a far cry from the product I first used in the 1980s running on DOS. I remember reading an ad for it in an in-flight magazine and thinking, this is it! Back in the day, there was no such thing as SFA or CRM and contact managers like ACT! and Goldmine were amazing. They ran on your desktop and soon your laptop computer and they became places where everything you knew about a deal was stored. No more lists, spreadsheets, and legal pads with cryptic notes and scribbled phone numbers.

Sure, CRM would follow with even more functionality but for many organizations and individuals, a copy of ACT! and a laptop were about all you really needed (add Word, PowerPoint and Excel or if you’re a geezer like me Word Perfect, Harvard Graphics and Lotus to complete the ensemble).

ACT! has a remarkably loyal user base and over three million deployments. And while most of those deployments are for individuals, a growing cadre of businesses — tens of thousands, actually — are now using the technology to support sales workgroups.

ACT! has prospered despite all this competition because it fits a big niche that demands simplicity, economy and that keeps up with the times. So, good on you SageACT! and happy birthday.